Sarah: Edinburgh, Scotland - Squirrel Nutkin
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2007
1
70
80
Trip End
Dec 28, 2008
Edinburgh,
Scotland,
United Kingdom
Thursday, July 17, 2008
We were successful in finding some couchsurfing hosts in Edinburgh: a lovely young couple, Linda and Dom. Dom is English and Linda is Irish, but they are living in Edinburgh while she studies animal science. They have a little flat (one bedroom and an office) very close to The Royal Mile, tourist central. They also have a lovely old cat called Tony who is very smoochy and always wanting to be fed. I literally tripped over him one day, and in order to save his old, sick bones, I sent myself hurling elbow-first into the door frame.
On the first day we went out and caught another one of those open-topped hop-on/off buses to take a circular tour of the city and its main landmarks. We find those are a good way to get our bearings in a city and see what things we might like to come back to. We got off at Edinburgh Castle and went for an explore. It's more like a fortified town than a castle - huge. It's got streets, a church, a prison, a war memorial (just missing a corner dairy!) The site of the castle really is spectacular. From one end you just walk slowly and gently uphill from the street (Royal Mile) to the main gates, but on all other sides it's a sheer drop right down the cliff-face. I was fully impressed with the building. For not the first time on this trip I thought, "how the hell do you get up/down there to build a flamin' stone wall?" Peering out through the archer-slots it's really hard to tell where the cliff stops and the walls begin.
Seeing the Scottish Honours was pretty cool. Scottish version of the Crown Jewels, but older, as the English ones were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell and everything had to be remade in the 1660s. They have the crown, sword, scepter and sword belt, as well as possibly the most beautiful necklace in the world, the Lorne Jewels. Ka-ching! Bling Bling! We also really liked the dog graveyard, where important soldiers' dogs from the last 150 years have been laid to rest with little doggie-sized gravestones.
The following day we really did nothing at all except recover (could've been the 5:30am wake-up call) and have some haggis for lunch - well it's got to be done hasn't it. Yes haggis. Made from ground sheeps's heart, lung and liver mixed with whole wheat grains and baked slowly. Sounds tempting huh? Actually it was pretty tasty. At least we did something Scottish that lazy day!
That night, Linda and Dom took us out to The Stand, Edinburgh's premier comedy bar. There was a charity event on, with three Scottish comics. It was a great night, a good antidote to museums and castles. (The castle was also a museum! i.e. a lot to read.) We did laugh and laugh, Ray and I less than some, as all the in-jokes and political/popular figures went over our heads, plus they were speaking in Scottish, which as many know is practically another language! Friggin funny night tho.
For our final day in Edinburgh, we decided that we would skip the museums - one really can see too many museums - and head to the award-winning Botanic Gardens, where Linda said you can apparently feed the squirrels. Yes! That sounds like us! We had to take three buses to get there, but we soon saw the little furry things - scampering between/through/in the trees. We started throwing nuts at them (some were unfortunately startled by this) but then we were able to get closer and closer until they were coming right up to us and eating the nuts out of our hands! We worked out that if we threw the nut up in the air it would get their attention and they would approach cautiously, one bound at a time. I'm sorry, but having the little dudes eat out of my hand is one of the most adorable things I've seen.
As it always is with animals, some were bolder than others. One or two would assess the situation then walk up gingerly, grab the nut in their mouth, have a sniff around to see if there were any more in the large space that was my hand and then nick off a few feet away to eat it in peace. Holding the nut in its tiny little paws, it would nibble furiously away, demolishing it in a few seconds. Then, given that a supply of these was obviously close at hand (wink wink) they would have no qualms about popping back for some more. Others however, would look longingly at the beckoning nut, creep a few squirrel paces closer then dance around sideways like there was a magnetic field about 30cm from my hand that they kept bouncing off! You would soon learn that these were the scaredy-squirrels, and couldn't bring themselves to risk ending up as squirrel soup, so you would give in and drop it right in front of your hand. That was ok. Safe then. Ray worked out you could actually get them to come down out of a tree and across the grass if you just made the throwing motion with your hand. We spent about two hours sitting there feeding them (the first time), didn't get tired of it. After lunch we went back again, and at one stage we had about 4 squirrels on the go at once. I had a cheeky wee guy who would sneak up behind me when he'd finished his nut and sit close enough that if I moved I would squash him, waiting for me to turn around and offer another treat.
I know it would be seriously uncool for me to say that was the highlight of our time in Edinburgh, so I won't.
